
“For what is life but a play in which everyone acts a part until the curtain comes down?”
The Praise of Folly (1511)
Source: Tuesdays with Morrie
“For what is life but a play in which everyone acts a part until the curtain comes down?”
The Praise of Folly (1511)
"This Cruel Age has deflected me..." (1944)
Context: This cruel age has deflected me,
like a river from this course.
Strayed from its familiar shores,
my changeling life has flowed
into a sister channel.
How many spectacles I've missed:
the curtain rising without me,
and falling too. How many friends
I never had the chance to meet.
Haunted (2005)
Variant: I used to think the secret to a happy ending was to bring down the curtain at the exact right time. A moment after happiness, then everything's all wrong, again.
Mesiras Nefesh, quoted in M. Samuel. Prince of the Ghetto. Alfred A. Knopf, 1948, p. 22.
“Let us draw the curtain of charity over the rest of this scene”
Source: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Quoted in The Musical Times, February 1909; cited from Percy A. Scholes The Mirror of Music, 1844-1944 (London: Novello, 1947) vol. 1, p. 267.
Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Red Prophet (1988), Chapter 15.
Source: NOS4A2
Five Years
Song lyrics, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (1972)